My wife and I are in a strange position with a lot of unknowns.
We moved to Colorado almost 2 years ago and as of today our house is worth about 100k more than when we bought it. The house does need a lot of working coming up in a few years and it is more house than we need. Currently worth 350-400k
Here is what we are considering:
We are looking at a property that has 4X more land in a rural area that comes with a 1200sqft pole barn and an airstream trailer. The land has a well and electric but we would have to have septic installed.
Asking price is 220k but given how long land sits here it's likely we can talk that down.
The quote to have a septic system installed is 20k.
Now the story: We would sell our house and move into the airstream while I got to build out the pole barn into a living space for us (which is something we would LOVE). If we could keep our building costs under 80k we could reduce our housing costs by 100k, and have more land for our chickens, greenhouse, and alpacas. Currently we are 10 minutes outside of downtown Estes Park and the move would be 25 minutes outside of town.
Our fear is the unknowns:
- Unknown construction costs could kill the cost savings really fast
- Life in an 30ft airstream for 6 months to a year could get interesting with the wife
- Just the general stress of a build
- Major benefit after we have the build, we live in a very desirable vacation destination and the airstream would be a huge revenue generator once we have our own place.
Looking for any feedback and thoughts from the outside; what would you do? What crazy expenses have you seen that I'm anticipating?
Anything is appreciated.
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